METRO GROWTH
Entrepreneurship ecosystems are deftly woven rather than imposed
Stakeholders must be clear about their objectives and implementation requires a solid management plan, writes Martin Feinstein
Municipalities are once again talking about entrepreneurial ecosystems as a way to broaden and speed up the rate of small business activity in our cities. The concept has waxed and waned as an enterprise development fashion over the past 20-odd years. The time is now right for our metros, where most meaningful entrepreneurial activity happens, to finally start building real entrepreneurial ecosystems. But they need to do it for the right reasons, with the right people, in the right way. An entrepreneurial ecosystem is a simple concept but a complex animal to create. In fact, it must not be created so much as woven together with diplomatic skill, market savvy and — most important — political continuity. The concept can be traced back to the study of industry clustering and the development of national innovation systems in the 1990s. In 2010, Prof Daniel Isenberg from Babson College in the US, who gave the keynote address at the Cape Town Entrepreneurship Week five years ago, became t...
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